A digital dashboard is a workspace that provides access to many common functions within Aptify. In many cases, a user can perform all of his or her common day-to-day tasks directly from one or more dashboards without having to access the Navigation Bar, Folder List, or individual views.
Each Aptify Application has one or more associated dashboards. In addition, the system provides a main dashboard that appears each time a user opens the Aptify application and each time a user selects the Home heading.
To create new dashboards, Aptify recommends that you use the Dashboard Options dialog to copy an existing global dashboard associated with a particular application. See Creating a Personal Dashboard for more information.
This topic provides an overview of the services associated with the Dashboards functionality and how the records in these services interact. It also describes how administrators can modify the properties of user-level dashboards they create to deploy them globally or to a particular group of users.
This topic covers the following sub-topics:
- About the Dashboard Services Hierarchy
- About the Dashboard Selection Methodology
- Modifying the Scope and Rank of a Dashboard
See About the Administration Application Forms for field-by-field description of each service associated with Digital Dashboards. Note that the field-by-field description is provided for informational purposes only.
About the Dashboard Services Hierarchy
Aptify stores data related to dashboards in nine services. Aptify automatically creates records in each of these services as necessary when a user designs a dashboard using the Dashboard Options dialog (see Creating a Personal Dashboard for more information). These services interact as described below:
- Dashboards: This is the top-level record for the dashboard container. This record stores the name of the dashboard, its scope, its rank, and other values. Each dashboard is comprised of one or more areas, which is in turn comprised of one or more parts. Note that when you delete a Dashboard's record in the Dashboards service, Aptify automatically deletes its corresponding areas and parts as well.
- Dashboard Areas: This service stores information about each dashboard area, including area's default size and location. Each area is linked to one parent Dashboards record. An area is a container for one or more parts.
- When a user modifies an area's dimensions for a global or group level dashboard, the user's personal settings are saved in a Dashboard Area User Values record. Note that this service is not associated with an application by default.
- Dashboard Parts: This service stores information about each dashboard part, including the component and input map parts used to display the desired information on the dashboard and the part's default size and location with the area. Each part is linked to one parent Dashboard Areas record.
- When a user modifies a part's appearance in a global or group level dashboard, the user's personal settings are saved in a Dashboard Part User Values record. Note that this service is not associated with an application by default.
- Dashboard Components: This service stores the components that can be used by a dashboard part, and each component's input properties (which flow down to a part's input map). These components are reusable and include the Microsoft Outlook components, the View Container, and the Button Bar. See Configuring Dashboard Part Components for information on the standard components provided with Aptify.
- Dashboard Components can be grouped by category. The standard system includes one category (General) but you can add additional categories as necessary. These categories are stored in the Dashboard Component Categories service.
- Dashboard Button Bars: When a user creates a dashboard part that uses the Button Bar component, Aptify automatically creates a Dashboard Button Bars record that stores general information about the button bar's appearance and default button behavior. Each button bar has one or more buttons.
- Dashboard Buttons: This service stores information about each button that appears in a button bar, including the button's action type and properties that determine what system operation is performed when a user clicks the button. See Configuring the Button Action Types for information on the standard button action types provided with Aptify. Each Dashboard Buttons record is linked to one Dashboard Button Bars record.
About the Dashboard Selection Methodology
An application may have multiple dashboards associated with it that a particular user can access. When a user selects an application in Aptify, the system uses the following methodology to determine which dashboard to display:
- If the user has previously specified a default dashboard for this application, the system displays that dashboard. See Specifying a Default Dashboard for information on how a user selects a default dashboard.
- If there is no default dashboard for a particular user and application, the system selects a User-scope dashboard first (if one exists for the current user). If a User-scope dashboard does not exist, the system selects a Group-scope dashboard. If neither a User or Group dashboard exists, then the system selects the Global-scope dashboard.
- Note that dashboard selection purposes, a user is associated with only one group (his/her Primary Group). A user is assigned a Primary Group in the Users record.
- If the system identifies multiple dashboards with the same scope, the system uses the record with the lowest rank.
- If the system identifies multiple dashboards with the same scope and the same rank, the system displays the dashboard whose record has the lowest ID.
- Even if the system does not display a dashboard by default, a user can still switch to that dashboard (assuming it is available to the user). Also, a user can specify any of his/her available dashboards as the default dashboard for a particular application. See Switching Dashboards for details.
Modifying the Scope and Rank of a Dashboard
An administrator can change a dashboard's scope and rank as necessary (following the criteria described About the Dashboard Services Hierarchy) to configure the system to display a particular dashboard for a particular user.
The following steps describe how an administrator can create a new dashboard and then modify its settings to deploy it globally, or to a group or user.
- Use the Dashboard Options dialog to create a new dashboard, either by copying and modifying an existing dashboard or creating a new dashboard from scratch.
- See Creating a Personal Dashboard or Creating a New Dashboard for information on how to use the Dashboard Options dialog to create user-level dashboards.
- Open or create a view of the Dashboards service.
- The Dashboards service is found in the Aptify Framework Administration application.
- Open the record for the dashboard you created in Step 1.
- Dashboards created using the Dashboard Options dialog are personal dashboards that have a Usage Scope of User and are linked to the specific User who created it.
- Note that access to a dashboard is controlled by the Usage Scope and Group/User fields. The User Permissions and Group Permissions tabs are reserved for future use.
- Change the dashboard's Usage Scope.
- If you want the dashboard to be available to all users, change the value to Global.
- If you want the dashboard to be available to members of a specific group, change the value to Group and enter a group in the Group field.
- Note that for dashboard selection purposes, a user is associated with only one group (his/her Primary Group). A user is assigned a Primary Group in the Users record.
- Note that for dashboard selection purposes, a user is associated with only one group (his/her Primary Group). A user is assigned a Primary Group in the Users record.
- Modify the Rank value as necessary.
- If you created a new dashboard from scratch, the default rank is 0. If you created a copy of an existing dashboard, the copy's rank is the same as the rank for the dashboard you copied.
- If two or more dashboards have the same scope and the user has not specified a default dashboard, the system displays the dashboard with the lowest rank.
- Save and close the record.
After saving a dashboard with a Usage Scope of Group or Global, you can no longer use the Dashboard Options dialog to modify it. The Dashboard Options dialog is only available for User-scope dashboards,
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